the writer holds full time job but currently also writes for The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, ASEE Prism Magazine, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Forbes.

some key points i've picked

- if you don't capture readers' attention in the first or second paragraph, they lose interest and move on
- you have to say all you can in the fewest words possible
- your articles need to be useful - readers want to learn something, and to gain the most knowledge by the least reading.
- get a friend to read your article before you post, to pick out silly mistakes, grammer etc

Here's an anecdote that may be useful in addition to what he has to say:

Growing up, I was the school paper mill. $10 then $20 then $50 then up to the $100's for a paper. When my friends headed to college, I wrote their application essays. I was the go to guy for writing. Now, the thing about me is that I like accomplishing relatively difficult tasks with the least amount of effort and in the shortest amount of time. Thus, out of all my work, it was rare for me to even read the required texts, I'd just skim. This, combined with the fact that each and every one of my clients (or myself due to procrastinating) would wait and give me 1 or 2 nights to write their papers. Yet, every single paper got great grades.

I did this by conceiving structural templates. I made rules from looking at highly graded work. For example, in an intro I'd always go: hook statement, summary of subject, thesis. Then I break it apart to fill the body and repeat the intro in reverse to close. Simple, stupid, and effective. Worked every time and took no time at all. By no time at all I mean 10 pages of "researched" writing in 2 hours fast.

So how this relates to articles and moreso how it can help you write faster... You know by now that your articles title is massively important; "How to Rank 1 on Google in 5 Steps" and the like. These article types are your templates. Somewhere online there's a PDF floating around of eye catching title templates and article styles. I'll try and see if I can remember where it was but I'd think most of that's common knowledge here.

So you suss out your template types. From there, work out how that sort of article needs to flow. If you're writing about 5 ways to stop aging for your beauty site, think about how that needs to read to be effective. Introduce what the readers problem is, tell them you have the solution, etc... It follows his point that you need to engage in the first couple paragraphs.

Where the template really becomes effective is in it's actual use. When I really write, I get a legal pad out and get to work. So let's say I have an article where I need to make 10 points on the topic. I organize the points I need to touch on in a coherent order, then I number the edge of the page so #'s 1-10 have as equal amount of lines as possible. Then I plot out those 10 points. I introduce them, I fill in the stats/research/quotes/etc..., introduce those, and close the point and bridge to the next. These aren't sentences I write down, either, just the basic idea in as few words as possible. Then I'll take my page, open notepad and type it out as if I were talking to a friend or colleague about it - conversational but not too loose. I only worry about word count after I've finished typing because it's only a matter of rephrasing certain things to boost it.

If it's in a niche I know, I can write a full article that sounds like I'm an authority in about 20 to 30 minutes, research and such included. If I don't know my topic, it'll take me a little closer to an hour.

So it's basically a form that I just plug information in. It might be hard at first if you don't have an easy time grabbing words but over time just about anyone could master it.

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